Thursday, August 16, 2012

Cleaned by Capitalism, Polluted by Communism

"Modern, innovative, industrial competitive capitalism makes available to almost every denizen of the early 21st-century capitalist world a host of inexpensive and effective machines and substances to protect ourselves from what would otherwise be the daily, up-close-and-personal pollution of bacteria from rotting food particles. We have dinnerware – plates, drinking glasses, bowls, pots, pans, and utensils – made of ceramics, plastics, and metals that resist absorbing foods and that can be vigorously washed, daily. We wash these items using inexpensive detergents, hot potable water, and dish cloths and sponges (that more and more are disposable – thus making the cloths and sponges that we use cleaner than otherwise).

Increasingly, of course, we wash our dishes and utensils by using this incredible, electricity-powered anti-pollutant machine….

The hot water sprayed in powerful jets combines with special detergent
to clean dishes more thoroughly – and with far less expenditure of human
time and suffering of aggravation – than is achieved by washing dishes
by hand. Another instance in which our society is cleaned by
capitalism."

I thought of Don's "Cleaned by Capitalism" series today when I read Cuban super-blogger Yoani Sanchez's post titled "Have We Become Accustomed to Dirt?" (I think the answer is YES), but which could have alternatively been titled "Polluted by Communism":

"A teenager writes — with his index finger — the words “Wash me” in the dust on
the window of the bus. A mother asks her son what the school bathroom is like and he confirms that “it
stinks so much you can’t go in there.” A dentist eats a french fry in front of
her patient and with unwashed hands proceeds to extract a tooth. A passerby lets
his pizza — just out of the oven — drip cheese over the sidewalk, where it
accumulates in a pool of fat. A waitress cleans the tables at Coppelia Ice Cream
with a smelly rag, and puts out glasses sticky with successive layers of badly
scrubbed milk. A spellbound tourist drinks a mojito in which several ice cubes
made from tap water are floating. A sewer overflows a few yards from the kitchen
of a recreation center for kids and teens. A cockroach quickly darts along the
clinic wall while the doctor listens to a patient’s chest.

All this and more I could enumerate, but I prefer
to summarize what I’ve seen with my own eyes. The hygiene of this city shows an
alarming decline and creates a scenario for the spread of disease. The cholera
outbreak in the east of the country is a sad warning of what could also happen
in the capital. The lack of health education from the earliest years of life
lead us to accept filth as the natural environment in which we move. The
material shortages also raise the epidemiological risk. Many mothers reuse
disposable diapers several times, stuffing them with cotton or gauze. The
plastic bottles collected in the trash serve as containers for homemade yogurt
or for milk sold on the black market. The inadequate water supply in many
neighborhoods reduces hand washing and even the number of baths per week. The
high prices and shortages of cleaning products further complicate the situation.
It is very difficult now to find stores selling mops to clean the floor and
detergent is also scarce. Keeping clean is expensive and complicated."

MP: In a market-based economy, keeping clean is cheap and easy, as the "Cleaned by Capitalism" examples on Cafe Hayek clearly illustrate. It's only under market-repressing communism that "keeping clean is expensive and complicated." Perhaps Yoani Sanchez could have a series of posts on her blog titled "Polluted (or Fouled) by Communism."

Thank you FDA, EPA and the rest of the alphabet soup of bureaucratic meddlers for raising the cost of sanitation, clean air, water etc., for preventing the terminally ill from accessing medication, killing people by keeping drugs off the market, and jacking up the cost of bringing drugs to market. Where would our central planners be without them? Better off.

In the Soviet Union, hospitals were required to have one toilet per 76 patients. They regularly overflowed, covering the floor in sewage. I was in and out of hospitals for four years and I don't remember bathing facilities. I do remember the roof leaking and the ward flooding.

Rural hospitals there was no hot running water and my aunt recalls performing surgery surrounded by buckets to catch the water dripping from the leaks in the roof.

Polluted lakes and streams were the norm. Whole ecosystems were completely destroyed.

It's always tough to say what has caused a problem to go away, whether the regulator did it or was just around when it happened. My natural reaction (and this may just be me confirming my bias) is that the regulator's apperence is more correlation rather than causation.

We do see a number of cases in recent history where environmental conditions were improving before a regulatory agency came along: Child labor was virtually nonexistent before the Child Labor Laws were passed. Workplace injuries were falling long before OSHA came about. Even overall environmental conditions were improving before the EPA came about.

The thing with regulatory agencies is they are reactionary rather than proactive. Often, when a problem is discovered, companies have already developed a solution before the regulatory agency makes it's ruling. For example, in the auto industry, people were concerned with the amount of pollution cars were putting out in the 70's. Honda and Toyota burst onto the scene with new, cleaner cars. Later, the EPA passed regulations on the amount of pollution a car can emit (emission standards) and required all new vehicles to have a catalytic converter to clean them up. The Japanese car makers already met the standard (and then some) but did not have the converter. They asked the EPA for an exemption. The EPA denied them and required their vehicles to have the less efficient converter.

The point is, it is possible to say "the regulatory agency did this". But the question them becomes "what would have happened in absence of them?" That is impossible to answer.

I recently read an article (in The New Yorker, I think) about an auto trip through Russia and then Siberia. The author described the trash dumps by the side of the road, all down the road. The place is evidently a big trash heap.

I remember in the US when people threw garbage out of the windows of their cars and the place was littered up; no more. We took care of it, Communism couldn't.

Actually, before the EPA, rivers and harbors burning was a fairly common occurrence.

Since the establishment of the EPA, it hasn't, to my knowledge, happened again.

I would say, "Causation."

Right, but to prove causation you would need to show that it was something the EPA did that stopped this from occuring.

I mean, it would be like saying "The economy was in recession in 2001-2002 and subsequently expanded. George Bush was President. Therefore, George Bush must have caused the recession and subsequent expansion." No, that doesn't hold water or make sense.

I'm just trying to point out how hard it is to prove causation. You need replication, which we don;t have. We need some kind of control group.

I do agree with your point that local governments have helped with our sanitary revolution: they do provide sewer systems and often times water systems that help keep us clean. In some cases, they also provide trash and landfill services, too. That is a perfectly legitimate point. I think, though, your argument becomes weaker with the invocation of the EPA, FDA, etc. There is just as much evidence that these bodies harmed the environment through their policies as they did help. One could also invoke the argument that they stifle innovation that could lead to better, cleaner, things.

I don't know, Jon Murphy. My local government does a pretty poor job with those services. Are you saying that we should be thankful they're providing those things at all because private providers won't fill that need? Are you saying local government does it better? If so, on what evidence are you basing this?

I see no reason to be grateful to our overlords for preventing private competition so they can reserve the right to force us to buy a pretty lousy service.

Jon Murphy: " Workplace injuries were falling long before OSHA came about."

Absolutely! OSHA was created in 1970. In the 1950s and 1960s, the refinery where my dad worked emnarked on an extensive safety campaign. The oil company spent hundreds of thousamds if not millions on safety education and safety incentives. My dad and the other employees were proud when they accumulated milions of worked hours without a lost time accident.

So what motivated the employer to spend the shareholders' cash to keep the workplace safe? Two things:

1. incentiees offerred by the insurance cmpany which stood to lose if workers and their families filed claims against the refinery;

2. the higher labor costs the company would have incurred in maintainng a surplus of skilled workers to absorb injury-related absences.

Simple economic choices - not OSHA - is what kept my dad safe for the 35 years he worked at that refinery.

Are you saying that we should be thankful they're providing those things at all because private providers won't fill that need? Are you saying local government does it better?

Not saying that at all. I'm not making any kind of judgement call on how well/poor the services are provided. Just acknowledging it is a service provided. And they do a decent job at it. I mean, I don't know many places in America where raw sewage runs in the streets on a normal day like it will in Calcutta.

Can the private sector run the sewage system for a town or county? Sure. There are a number of ones in New Hampshire alone (including Manchester, the largest city in New Hampshire). But it is a fairly rare occurance.

I don't want you to think I am saying "Praise be to Government!" What I am saying is "my taxes go to this, and at least they aren't f***ing it up."

To put it another way, on my list of things to be angry about the government butting into, the sewer system is down at the bottom.

Simple economic choices - not OSHA - is what kept my dad safe for the 35 years he worked at that refinery.

Oh yeah! One of the arguments I love to hear is "well, if OSHA didn't force them to put in these handrails, then the companies wouldn't do it!" Well, that's just an incredibly stupid argument. Even without the threat of lawsuit, workplace injuries are extremely costly to the employer. It removes a productive worker from the field. If it's really bad, they need to bring in a new worker, which is costly in and of itself, but you get the lost potential output of the first employee.

You are probably right, Methinks. Maybe because it's something I don't mind, I don't pay it half as much attention as I should.

Let me ask you something (I'll throw it out to everyone): you get a separate sewer bill? Or is the sewer paid for out of the town's general tax fund and you don't know exactly what you pay for the sewer?

You can't pay attention to everything, but I always think it's worth questioning authority when the issue comes up.

We had a property assessment case here where the assessment was $35,000 more than it should have been and despite clear evidence that the assessor was wrong, the county went to court. And lost. But what does the county care? The taxpayers paid for it to fight a losing battle in court. Local governments are better than the Federal government, but there is no reason at all to trust them.

Sadly, I have gone back to washing dishes by hand for a while. My new, energy efficient machine has turned out to be a piece of crap. Not only does it not dry the dishes properly because of all the energy saving measures taken it tends to break down whenever a seed or some hard particle makes it into certain parts that are now plastic but used to be made from steel not very long ago. Technology helps. When government meddles they make things worse than they used to be.

Vange, I notice my new dishwashers don't compare to my old ones. They don't break down (although, the miele is a POS) so much, but they neither clean nor dry the dishes the way dishwashers built 10 years ago did. Thanks, EPA.

"The thing with regulatory agencies is they are reactionary rather than proactive. Often, when a problem is discovered, companies have already developed a solution before the regulatory agency makes it's ruling. "

I think you are right on target. As people (countries) become wealthier over time and basic survival no longer requires their full attention, people become interested in air & water pollution, workplace safety, auto safety, child labor, environment, endangered species, and other concerns that truly poor people can't afford to consider.

This seems obvious when comparing wealthy, industrialized countries where property rights are relatively secure, to poor countries where they are not.

At some point it seems that trends that are "improvements" become codified in law by those who don't understand that what they advocate is happening already.

For example we can see from a chart that I can't find right now that workplace injuries and deaths have decreased steadily since WW2, and the establishment of OSHA had no effect on this trend.

JM, it depends on the model we're talking about and dishwashers wear out over time. Is your old GE a comparable model to the Bosch or was it lower quality? It's hard to compare a new dishwasher with an old (presumably worn out) dishwasher unless you have experience with the old dishwasher when it was new.

"Just make sure you don't have any puddles in your yard when it rains or the EPA will declare it a "wetland"."

Well, maybe Paul will comment, but my experience of the Phoenix area is that since any small amount of rain seems to create puddles that last for days, the entire Valley of the Sun can probably be considered a wetland. :)

"The study “Randomized Government Safety Inspections Reduce Worker Injuries with no Detectable Job Loss,” found that workplace injury claims dropped 9.4% at randomly chosen businesses in the four years following an inspection by the California OSHA program, compared with employers not inspected.

Those same employers also saved an average of 26% on workers’ compensation costs, when compared with similar firms that were not inspected.

This means that the average employer saved $355,000 (in 2011 dollars) as a result of an OSHA inspection. The effects were seen among small and large employers."

"The study “Randomized Government Safety Inspections Reduce Worker Injuries with no Detectable Job Loss,” found that workplace injury claims dropped 9.4% at randomly chosen businesses in the four years following an inspection by the California OSHA program, compared with employers not inspected.

Those same employers also saved an average of 26% on workers’ compensation costs, when compared with similar firms that were not inspected.

This means that the average employer saved $355,000 (in 2011 dollars) as a result of an OSHA inspection. The effects were seen among small and large employers."

Question: What was the trend before this? Were injury claims falling at a higher or lesser rate than the 9.4% rate quoted? Does this account for differences between industries? Are the two groups (control and experiment) similar?

I'm just trying to get an idea of how accurate the study is, Peak. I find there are far too many people who are statistically illiterate. I am not suggesting you are one of them, but if we are to discuss this, I'd like to know it's legitimate and not some poorly designed study.

"In China there are 7.29 deaths per million tons of coal produced, compared to 0.04 deaths in the United States."

Not at all. China is where the US was 100-150 years ago. The good news is that when the Chinese are as wealthy as Americans their death rate in coal mines will likely be comparable. All without help from government agencies and regulators.

Cleaning up and capitalism, as measured by GDP appear to be closely linked. No surprise to environmental economists.

You want to maximize GDP growth, just minimize total costs where - you guessed it-

Total Cost = Production Cost + External Cost + Government Cost.

Trash is usually a component of all three terms on the right hand side: Trash that a company pays to capture, clean up, recycle or dispose of; Trash that gets waway and becomes someone else's problem, and trash that the government then has to pick up, monitor or regulate.

One of things that I love about environmental arguments is that two events will always be posted to 'prove' the need for regulations. The first is the burning river - if you really look into it the river burned because no one owned it and the local politicians played kick the can down the road, no one was responsible - Other cities had similar waste problem but their rivers didn't burn. It is an interesting read. The other is without OSHA we would see a massive rise in injuries and death in the workplace. Go to some of the OSHA sites and look at the death rates and injury rate graphs before and after OSHA. What is beautiful is they all slope down, OSHA has had little impact. But lots of folks are employed by good folks in Washington.

Yes, Peak. I'm completely convinced the experts will fix everything. Like they did in Russia. And, obviously, experts are not going to favour over-regulation. They bright line between just the right amount of regulation and over-regulation is so clear and bright they can't miss it.

Cuyahoga has become one of the great fables of the environmental movement.

'"It was the summer of 1969 and the Cuyahoga River was burning."

But the famous photograph that appeared in Time was not of the Cuyahoga River fire of 1969. (The fire lasted just 30 minutes and was put out before anyone could snap a picture of it.) It was of a far more serious fire in 1952 that burned for three days and caused $1.5 million in damage. In fact, the Cuyahoga had caught fire on at least a dozen occasions since 1868.'

Hydra said... It is capitalisms failings that make charity and government necessary.

Some form of Government has been necessary since humans first started to live in groups of more than one. Human nature makes some form of government necessary. Government has been around long before capitalism. To say that capitalism makes government necessary is just a silly statement.

I am sure in a socialist utopia where the "government" distributes all the income to citizens, then "charity" would not be necessary as we know it now because we would all be accepting charity from government since they have now made us all slaves. Charity came into existance at the same time as government, when humans started to live in groups of more than one. Human nature makes charity necessary. Another silly statement from Hydra.

"It is capitalisms failings that make charity and government necessary.

It is capitalism successes that make charity and government possible."

Attacking half of an idea is less than half of an argument.

As you point out, Some form of Government has been necessary since humans first started to live in groups of more than one. It was made necessary, probably because some kind of trade or barter went wrong, or because the biggest strongest richest guy wanted more power.

In any case capitalism isnt the ONLY thinkg that makes governemtn necessary, but given the recent and contineuing string of banking scandals, it certainly seems to demand more than a little vague oversight.

Sure the money came form capitalism, but the things the foundation is doing are things that capitalism failed to do on its own.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Sure, the money came from capitalism and is used by voluntary means without government intervention and coercion, BUT, BUT, BUT...

Additionally, why don't you look at where the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation is most active? You'll see that capitalism is definitely NOT in those places, so the poverty and misery in those places are not "things that capitalism failed to do on its own."

However, it does highlight the things Hydra fails to understand about capitalism.

Hydra said...GivemeFreedom: You took the quote out of context: the full thought reads"It is capitalisms failings that make charity and government necessary.It is capitalism successes that make charity and government possible."Attacking half of an idea is less than half of an argument.

Seems like 2 ideas to me, even though you made them one after the other, each can stand on it's own as a statement. Since Methinks explained the silliness of the second one, I decided to highlight the silliness of the first.

Methinks said...It is capitalism successes that make charity and government possible.

Since when has capitalism been a prerequisite for either?

8/17/2012 6:45 AM

Hydra saidAs you point out, Some form of Government has been necessary since humans first started to live in groups of more than one. It was made necessary, probably because some kind of trade or barter went wrong, or because the biggest strongest richest guy wanted more power.In any case capitalism isnt the ONLY thinkg that makes governemtn necessary, but given the recent and contineuing string of banking scandals, it certainly seems to demand more than a little vague oversight.

Seems to me that you just made my argument for me. Yours was a silly statement, Capitalism failings make charity and government necessary seems pretty clear. Capitalism fails, charity and government are necessary. You made that very clear connection.

But now you are talking about some cavemen who are bartering and some modern day bankers who need to regulated?? Wouldn't the biggest strongest richest guy back then actually be the government?

Hydra said..."charity" would not be necessary as we know it now because we would all be accepting charity from government since they have now made us all slaves.================================And you think MY statements are silly?Since when is a slave someone who accepts charity? If anything, he is someone who is paying far more than he gets. And unlike tax paying citizens, he has no say in what gets paid for.

And you accuse me of taking the quote out of context? I said,

I am sure in a socialist utopia where the "government" distributes all the income to citizens, then "charity" would not be necessary as we know it now because we would all be accepting charity from government since they have now made us all slaves. Charity came into existance at the same time as government, when humans started to live in groups of more than one. Human nature makes charity necessary. Another silly statement from Hydra.

I consider it to be two partial and ineffectual assaults on an idea you have so far ignored and dismisses but not yet addressed: there are things capitalism does not do. It is not perfect or complete.

For the things capitalism does not do we have charity and government. Both of them rely on profits from capitalism and other industry.

There are also things capitalism does badly, and for that we have government.

You may argue that the system is out of control, but that system contains elements of both government and private enterprise. If you have an airplane falling out of the sky, the goal ought to be to fix the problem, not the blame. If the engines are not working you need to restore them, not blame the pilot.

I included the eclipses to indicate I was taking it out of context. The preface was not Germaine to the point in question because it ass a subordinate clause. Unlike my idea in which both parts are held to be equal.

My argument stands. Your preface defends on some socialite utopia, which does no t exist, so that part of your argument I'd moot. A false preface is a logical error, but without it the remainder still makes no sense. Slaves are not the recipients of government charity .

Rather, they are the result of s failure of government. A failure that a Republican government fought a war over.

Look, I am a scientist. And an engineer. I believe there are right answers and we will eventually find them. We will eventually discover weather there is anthropogenic global warming or not. After enough itemptations we will discover weather republican policies or democratic policies are better.

I have liberal friends to believe that bbusiness is always bad t.hat walmart and Monsanto are always wrong. I do not think they are correct. No amount are going on their part will convince me that they are always correct.

Look, I am a scientist. And an engineer. I believe there are right answers and we will eventually find them. We will eventually discover weather there is anthropogenic global warming or not. After enough itemptations we will discover weather republican policies or democratic policies are better.

I have liberal friends to believe that bbusiness is always bad t.hat walmart and Monsanto are always wrong. I do not think they are correct. No amount are going on their part will convince me that they are always correct.

"I have liberal friends to believe that bbusiness is always bad t.hat walmart and Monsanto are always wrong. I do not think they are correct. No amount are going on their part will convince me that they are always correct."

This was bad enough the first time. No need to post it twice.

You might want to consider either ditching that andriod device or doing all your posting before you start hitting the sauce.

[slaves] "Rather, they are the result of s failure of government. A failure that a Republican government fought a war over."

No, they are a failure of human morality.

That big government Republican Lincoln killed 650,000 people to preserve the Union. Slavery was a root cause of the division between North and South, but Lincoln pointed out in his first inaugural address that slavery wasn't as important to him important as preserving the Union.

Question of degree isn't it? If I ho out in the wild and bring back food, don't I have an investment in it, whether I have money or not? Won't I expect to barter it for something I value more than what it costs me?

Larry: "what would you call that production if it is performed in anticipation of barter and trade for other things?"

Hydra: "Question of degree isn't it? If I ho out in the wild and bring back food, don't I have an investment in it, whether I have money or not? Won't I expect to barter it for something I value more than what it costs me?"

And they both insist on making my point for me! Amazing.

Yes, hoing" in the wild is one example of trade - in your example for food. In fact hoing is believed to be one of the oldest professions.

You can define words in whatever way you wish for your own private use, but if you wish to join in discussions on a blog comment section, you must use the correct definitions that everyone else uses if you wish to be taken seriously.

Please read the following, paying special attention to the words I have bolded.

From Wiki:

"Capitalism is an economic system that is based on private ownership of the means of production and the creation of goods or services for profit. Competitive markets, wage labor, capital accumulation, voluntary exchange, and personal finance are also considered capitalistic.

Competitive markets, capital accumulation, voluntary exchange (trade), and personal finance are, however, not capitalism, and are often a part in non-capitalist systems such as market socialism and worker cooperatives."

That may be too fine a distinction for you, but please try to understand that there's a difference.

the black market is a perfect example of a non-govt free market - capitalism - and it's not market socialism and it's not worker cooperatives - it's plain old free market capitalism.

or how about this.

You make the distinction between people investing their own time and resources toward sum productive activity that yields something they can sell or trade for other stuff they need - without govt influence and without teaming up with other people.

I expected that you wouldn't understand what you read, if you even read it, but that's all I can do for you Larry.

The things you mention may be parts of a capitalist *system* but are not by themselves capitalism. Trade is a part of a capitalist system, but trade is not capitalism.

A black market is not a free market, and couldn't exist without government interference in the free market. A black market, by definition, is a market outside of normal channels, and is a perfect example of the laws of supply and demand in action - laws which cannot be legislated or regulated out of existence. Notice that black market prices are generally higher because supply has been artificially constrained.

Larry is right send you are wrong. An economic system does not require government. In the example, the winter owns the food he traces with.

The fine distinction is that once ownership is ddefined, then so is government, however weakly.

One part of understanding is using common meaning for words. Technology other part is trying to understand. Words are not without nuance. By insisting on only your rigid definition, you stake out your position or your territory as correct in advance. In going so you prejudice your argument rather than advance it.

I would argue that tribal government is still government.. that trade and government ate so closely linked that it is useless to argue otherwise in any real world sense.

The black market exists because supply is artificially constrained but that constraint may come from lack of government as easily as too much government.

Your idea of voluntary trade is imperfect. Ownership reduces supply, too. Ownership and Gove rnmrnt are closely linked. When one party owns something and another nrrfs it, that parties position in the negotiation is reduced. Since the trading positions are never truly equal the owner or capitalist holds a superior position.For apple, that was worth a billion dollars this week.